The attitude of our warfare

I have the blessing of teaching Ephesians 6, 18-20 with you this morning. And then Bob is on the schedule, at least, to teach next weekend to do the last couple verses of this passage of this chapter in this book. We find 6, 18-20 in a place where he's just closed on spiritual armor and then where we're supposed to stand together as he said in verses 10 and 13. He says stand three times there. The idea is that the body is standing together in armor and then he moves to prayer.

Now I happen to think that prayer is one of those topics that we talk about a lot. We're going to pray together. I'll pray for you for that. We just took prayer requests and I prayed. But prayer is one of those topics that because it tends to be kind of a normative part of the mature believer's life.

We don't necessarily spend a lot of time thinking about it, so it was good for me, at least in my own personal study time, to consider prayer and be thinking about it again in light. As I teach, I always try to approach topics and verses of new and continue to study things. So even though prayer is a thing that I've read books about and I've studied and I've even taught about before, it was still edifying for me to revisit it. So hopefully today it's as refreshing for you as it was for me in my study.

So Paul writes, starting in verse 18, with all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the spirit and with this in view be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints and pray on my behalf that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly as I ought to speak." So this has got the kind of a two-part construction here He's asking for prayer for the saints and then he's asking for prayer for himself as an apostle. And so we'll take a look at those as two sections.

So what is prayer? We use the word prayer a lot as Christians. But what does prayer mean? Does anybody have a working definition of prayer or how you would describe prayer? It's not complicated. The good news is if you're thinking of a simple answer, it's because it is. It's talking to God, right? It's seeking Him. It's roots, when you look and see prayer in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word means to ask. So it is not something that is too stunning to hear. It's speaking to God to intercede on behalf of ourselves or others. So while this is a simple concept, there are things that the Bible calls out for us to recognize as foundational truths.

So one of them is that prayer for anything but salvation by faith, by those who do not believe, is not a heard prayer. If somebody is not saved and they're praying for something, They're praying carnally for a thing that's carnal and they're not praying for salvation. It's not a prayer that God is interested in interfacing with them on. He wants them to be praying for salvation, right?

So that's an important starting point. We get this idea that the secular world says, I just pray for something. How many of you have heard of that book, The Secret? In The Secret, you just need to ask the universe for things and it's going to deliver it to you. And that's how a lot of pagan thinking about prayer is. I'm just going to ask the universe, not God, for stuff, not His will, and I'm going to get those things.

God is interested in it. If you're not saved, He wants you to be praying a very specific prayer to confess that you're responding to the gospel. All right, that was a surprise. Okay, I didn't move for a second because I thought I broke it. Another thing about prayer, and Roger taught on this in the main service, it was a year ago or so, Romans 8.26, the Holy Spirit prays on our behalf. One of the things that's cool about that is if the Holy Spirit is praying, God must want to answer prayer. And I think that's a good insight. Another element here, our motives matter. And I've got multiple cross-references here, check my work, make sure I'm not cheating on anything.

But in James 4.3 or 5.16 there, he says we ask with wrong motives so God doesn't answer our prayers.

If we ask God like these televangelists do, the famous televangelist Robert Tilton, and when I say famous, maybe the word should be infamous. Televangelist Robert Tilton once said, you know, does God deserve a circular driveway and a mansion? Yes, he does. Does God deserve a Porsche? Yes, he does. And he asked me to drive it. So it's like when we ask with wrong motives, that's a bad place to be starting from. And that is actually a direct quote. Somehow I memorized that the first time I heard it. I was like, that is so spectacular. Tom, you look like you had a... I was thinking of that other song, Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me.

But if we come to the Lord and our motives are not in alignment with His, that may be something for us to consider. Now, I want to make a follow-up statement to that in a few moments. So let's just put a bookmark in your mind on holding on to the motives principle. He says we are to be praying all the time as part of our walk with the Lord.

1 Thessalonians 5.17 and again here in Ephesians 6.18, we see that praying all the time is a principle that's there. Now, this is always one of those things that's hard because what I often find is if you're a legalist and you hear praying all the time or pray without ceasing, the legalist is often concerned about, oh well, I just need to always be praying and then I can comply with a command here. But what would be a better understanding of praying without ceasing in a non-legalistic in some way, somehow, without trying to be overly specific, just resting in Him and trusting in Him moment by moment. Well, I think just continual, like, it's almost like just a continual conversation. Yeah. Like, oh, you know, I don't know, at least for me. Yeah.

And I think that's an important thing for us to recognize, is that if we look at it legalistically, is that walking in fellowship? Legalism isn't walking in fellowship, it's walking in compliance. But if we are instead walking in fellowship, then it is that conversation. It is that talking about things.

It is the Lord, as He brings things to mind, that's there. And we're going to get into that in a little bit more detail as well. We can pray from just our mind. I think that's really fascinating. If you look at 1 Corinthians 14-15, He says, I pray in the Spirit and I pray in my mind. It's possible to just be checking off a checklist. That's what legalism is going to be. But we'll see here, and what we would also find parallels that in 1 Corinthians 14-15, is that it's good if we're praying in the Spirit, not just praying from our mind. Not rote memorization, but thoughtful communication.

The next one here is where to be praying for one another and James 5.16 says that, Ephesians 6.18 says that. It turns out praying for one another is probably the most common way that we tend to think about prayer within the body is that we're praying for one another. So that's not a foreign concept and I don't think anybody's shocked by that. Circling back around to why our motives matter, I think it's important for us to consider things like our relationships with other human beings.

What would happen if every time you saw somebody, you were anticipating the same conversation? You'd be boring, right? You'd have a friend in Albuquerque every time you go to sleep. You'd never do anything. What do you have to talk about, right? Oh, there's nothing there.

But with the Lord, if we consider what He's doing in our lives, if we consider what our understandings are when we consider what's going on there, there's a big deal. So often as believers, we pray for circumstances to change, right? Like, oh hey, we pray for Bob's health. a circumstance that we would just ignore, right? We want to pray for the circumstance to change.

That's good. But sometimes, like this last summer, I think, I hope I haven't used this too much as an illustration, but it was a big event in my life. This last summer when our sewage main broke, there was all kinds of prayer going around. Okay, we were praying all sorts of prayers. And we weren't praying for a miraculous healing of the clay pipes. That was actually not one of the prayers.

But as we look throughout prayer in the scriptures, we see there's another fundamental element, and that is that as a result of active prayer, prayer changes those who pray. The Lord will change our perspective as we see things in light of what God is doing. Sometimes in unanswered prayers, He's doing something bigger than we imagined. Sometimes as we pray, he shows us different things. So I've got a list of things that are in the bottom paragraph there. This change in the one who prays is a result of the believer boldly going boldly before his throne.

And I'm missing the word going from Hebrews 4.16.

And as Hebrews 4.11 tells us, this place before God is a place of rest. So if you're praying and you're in circumstances that are intense, right away the first thing that changes is your perspective of where you are. You're reminded of your position. My position is heavenly. I'm boldly going before the throne of God. And so the first thing that happens is our perspective and we reach this place of rest, even if in our minds we are not necessarily resting. We know that the place that we are before the Lord is a place of rest. Our minds are changed about the circumstance because we see things within God's will. We want to pray things in light of God's will.

Now, how many of you have ever turned this terrible, terrible idea of praying things in God's will into a wussy prayer? Have you ever done that? Let me give you an example from the life of Randy. I don't want to ask God for something too hard. Because if I do, maybe it'll be too big and God will be like, nah, pass on that one, Randy.

But instead, I'll give him the compromise wussy prayer you know lord i just pray that this really difficult thing that somebody's going through that you just help them you know get some pam on there and we'll just spray the pam on the lubricant and you'll just get through it no i'm praying for you to intervene and teach them and grow them and do this thing that's hard but it's in light of what you're doing the wussy prayer is the easy one right i don't know what god's will is so i'm going to pray with apprehension. Is that the kind of prayer that we're talking about with God's will? We do want to pray for God's will, but we also don't want to pray in a way that doesn't reflect our understanding of His sovereignty, of the supernatural big nature of who God is. But as our minds are changed about who God is as we study His word and we learn who He is, we are going to pray for things within God's will, but not with the wussy version but with the confidently going boldly before the Lord version. We can trust that the Holy Spirit is interceding for us even if we don't understand how to pray about circumstances and there again is that Romans 8 26 and 27. Let's flip back there and read it because I think it's it's an important thing for us to to keep in mind what God says about God's involvement in our lives from our inner being here.

Romans 8.26 and 27 he says, In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. and he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." So even if we don't know what the will of God is in this situation and we're just praying, Lord your will be done, the Holy Spirit is doing that.

Can you rest in that? That's a big deal to be able to rest in prayer knowing that the Holy Spirit is praying the perfect prayer. Even if you Maybe you add some alms when you're praying and God can handle the alms, right? But the Holy Spirit doesn't even have alms.

He has groans and I think that's cool. Next there, we see that the way things unfold is in alignment with God's eternal plan of perfection and glory. So what's amazing about the the next verse after 26 and 27 is that we know God causes all things to work together for good who love God to those who are called according to his purpose. And he's conforming us to the images of his Son. It keeps going. That's why Romans chapter 8 is a favorite chapter of most believers, right? It keeps going. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

But the idea that's here is that prayer changes those who pray. If we're not praying constantly, or praying without ceasing, or always praying for one another, then we have a consequence of that, is that our minds may not be being renewed in those places, as Romans 12.2 suggests should be happening. So Paul says, With all prayer and petition, pray. So what is petitioning as a type of prayer? What does it mean to petition? Every time I go to the grocery store around the election season and the ballot season, there's petitions I'm supposed to sign, right? What's a petition?

Tom? More specific than a prayer for blessing or a general voicing of concern, a petition is a specific request for an outcome to the Lord. Paul is going to tell us what his specific outcome is that he's eager to see the Lord do in his own ministry. What if it's not God's will? Do we pray the wussy prayer or do we pray the petition? The petition is not something that we should be afraid to ask for a specific outcome.

We just also know that we do it in light of learning God's will circumstantially. He will show us and grow us in those things. How about this next one is actually something I grew up with a relative that kind of pushed this next thing here. And so I'm throwing it in as a little bonus side commentary. If we get enough people to pray, will God have to answer us? That's one of my favorite things. If two or more are gathered and then suddenly they're like, well, we've got to get at least two people before we pray, and then if we can get more, then God will really have to listen.

So while that is a common thought amongst a subset of believers, it's certainly not taught in the Bible as a specific result. That would be actually kind of bizarre to think about all the things we could try to manipulate God for if we could just get enough believers to do it. Wouldn't that be a little weird? One thing I think is fascinating is what if all the believers just gathered together and prayed for the rapture? Well, we could just get her done, right? I think a lot of believers have been praying for the rapture.

Paul says to, but the reality of the situation is God knows the timing, and we see Christ tell the disciples in Acts 1-7, only the Father knows when this is going to happen, and it's not going to be because all the believers twisted God's arm. That doesn't mean that it's bad for believers to gather together and pray. It doesn't mean that it's bad for many of us to pray. Paul's asking for a whole church to pray for his ministry. But I want to make sure that we don't get that weird cause and effect mentality about prayer that we just need to twist God's arm. That's not the point of prayer.

So the next question I hear is, why is it at all times, and we talked about praying without ceasing briefly earlier, But it is important for us to consider the work of the Lord in time. If we are to be abiding and walking in the direction of the Holy Spirit, we should anticipate the power and work of the Holy Spirit to be an expression of our new life in Christ 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So praying all the time is that relationship, and it's an expression of that relationship, and it's an expression of that life. Our position is secure, right? Our position is we're seated in the heavenlies. But our condition is impacted by that principle of all the time praying. That we're walking in that constant fellowship and intimacy with our Lord.

How many of you have been to the Denver Zoo since they put that elephant in Indian exhibit there. So how many of you have happened to notice they have a prayer wheel there? Anybody seen those? You know what I'm talking about? The Hindus have this idea of a prayer wheel and you come by and you spin it and every spin is counted as a prayer to the gods for something. It's whatever is printed on the prayer wheel. And I think that's Well, one first.

That's not biblical. Nobody needs 70 prayer wheels in their houses to pray for that. We're not praying for the elephants every time we spin the prayer wheel. But the thing that is important when we consider this with the praying is it's not rote memorization.

It's walking in that fellowship and talking about things. We may pray about the same thing over and over again, but it's going to be a heartfelt personal, thought-out prayer. It's not just reciting the same prayer again. We often teach young children a prayer for dinner or something like that. I've found that to be common in meeting different families.

And we're like, we're going to pray. And little Johnny's going to pray. And little Johnny gets there and he says, will you thank thee, Lord? And he says his little prayer. And it's cute and it's adorable. praying at all times should reflect the dynamic nature of what God is doing and not just be praying at all times the same thing over and over like a prayer wheel.

So he says that we need to be praying in the Spirit. So what is praying in the Spirit? Anyone heard some humdingers about what praying in the Spirit is? Because I grew up with some charismatic influence and we had some really good praying in the Spirit. We probably outdid your prayer in the spirit in performance.

I'm going to just call that out. It was a good performance. I had somebody pray for me that I would be able to pray in the spirit because that meant I was speaking in tongues, I was praying in tongues, and it didn't work. He's like, you've got to try harder. I couldn't. I just didn't have it in me.

But praying in the Spirit is not tongues. Praying in tongues. It's not praying in the angelic language. You've ever heard of that from 1 Corinthians 13? If I speak in the tongues of angels? That's not what this is talking about. So what is it talking about?

What does it mean to be praying in the Spirit? Walking in the Spirit. walking in fellowship with the Holy Spirit and He's directing the thoughts in our minds and He's guiding our prayer life. And that's a really important thing for us to consider because that's part of changing our mind, isn't it? Changing our perspective. The Holy Spirit guiding our thoughts and leading us. Now the other thing I think is worth calling out here is sometimes the Holy Spirit will prompt us to be praying for somebody else. I've heard of missionaries saying, we had something really terrible happen. We just prayed that the Lord would lead people to be praying for us right now because we don't know what to pray. We don't know what to do. We're in extreme persecution.

And they said what was fascinating was the number of believers that reached out and said, Hey, we just felt like we needed to pray for you because the Holy Spirit's doing something in his body through prayer. Again, he's changing minds, and he's changing hearts, and he's moving his body to do things. And that's a powerful thing.

That's not... Well, go ahead. I've got two hands. I don't have my Bible in front of me, but let's grab it today. What are the words in the verse that refers to this? He says, with all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit. That's it. Just in the Spirit. I find this powerful. that the Holy Spirit can actually prompt and guide you.

And that's a principle that I think we can forget. It gets mystical for some people and that's dangerous, right? We're not talking about mysticism. We're talking about that fellowship and that relationship being expressed in intimacy for one another. There are sometimes miraculous, in our eyes, movements of generosity between people.

One of my favorite stories growing up about missionaries was my dad's grandmother, before she met my grandpa, just knew she needed to go to the Fiji Islands as a missionary, but she didn't have a way to pay for it. But she made a reservation on the boat and she was just like, I don't know why, but the Lord wants me to go and I'm going. And again, this could be a little mystical sounding, but that's not how things worked out. The day that she was supposed to go to the Fiji islands, she got a letter with a check in it. And the person said, the Lord just put on my heart. that I needed to send you this money, and it was for the amount of money that she needed to go to the Fiji Islands. And as it turns out, there's a stranger across the internet that just got married this last week in the Fiji Islands, which is a lot safer now that cannibalism isn't normative there, because people like my great-grandmother went to the Fiji Islands.

But the prayer and the direction of the Holy Spirit sometimes moves in these ways that we... I'm sure if you talk to a missionary, and Roy may have a few good stories as well, if you talk to missionaries, they often have stories about the direction of the Holy Spirit moving in the body and in their own ministries. Sometimes in ways where we don't have technology historically that moves as fast as the internet, but the Holy Spirit is faster. Doing things, right? So praying in the Spirit is not mysticism, it's not heebie-jeebie, it's not praying in tongues, but instead it is this idea that the Holy Spirit is directing our thoughts and giving us things to consider in our prayer.

So he says next in the verse there, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. Now why should we be on the alert? We just talked about spiritual armor. So what was the spiritual armor for? What did verse 611 say about the spiritual armor, or putting on the armor of God? Stand against the wiles of the devil. Yeah, the wiles or the schemes of the devil.

And I think it's pretty important for us to consider that we be alert. If we're praying in the Spirit all the time, we're going to have an awareness of what is true, from God and we're going to be able to contrast that with the deception that the devil would employ to sucker us in.

But it's important because we need to consider that Ephesians 4.27, let's flip back there and read that verse, he says, and do not give the devil an opportunity, and in this case he's talking about anger and the sun, don't let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity, but that same principle of what's the problem with the anger? Where's your mind if you're angry? It's here, not setting your mind on things above, like Colossians 1-3 tells us.

So here We want to be on the alert because we need to be aware of the schemes of the devil and be responding to that by standing together. Say we're praying for one another together, we're standing together, and that togetherness is an important element of this being alert. What happens if you've got this Roman configuration, this tortoise configuration we saw on the screen if you were here, I don't know if it's coming on a month ago now, and all the shields were supposed to be covering our heads and covering the front and in some formations they even covered the sides with the shields so that the flaming arrows that could be coming in are glancing off. What happens if we're not on the alert? We're not in formation, we're not doing those things.

What do the arrows do? They kill you. They find a home. And the thing about flaming arrows is if something catches on fire, fire spreads real well, right? So those kinds of things, and that's why they actually had leather on the front of the shields. Leather is more fire retardant than the wood. So they had these things that they were trying to do to help keep the fire down. But being on the alert is part of that. What happens inside the body if we're not on the alert and we're not walking and praying in the Spirit. The flesh takes over and we find ourselves caught in the ditch.

The reason why Galatians 6.1 is written, and just for grins I'm going to flip back and read it for you so that you know what I'm talking about when I say Galatians 6.1.

He says, Brethren, if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted. Be on the alert, so you're not tempted. But if you see your brother or sister stumbling, make sure you come alongside and get them restored gently. Important word. I'm going to tell you, there's a little twist of humor in that, because as we go through Galatians in the main service, We're going to see Paul use some not gentle language in a few cases. He's going to be pretty blunt and bold with those people, but he says, hey, if you're doing it in the body, gentleness, not needling and poking. Gentleness, lifting up, restoring. We should be on the alert so that that doesn't have to happen within the body, but if somebody gets snuckered into a place of carnality, those who are spiritual are supposed to restore them. Why should we be praying for all the saints? Be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. Why does Paul want the church in Ephesus to be praying for all the saints 2,000 years ago? What's happening 2,000 years ago?

Persecution? That's a major issue. Persecution is happening. Paul's raising funds on his missionary journey. This is after that, right? But Paul's on his missionary journey and he's raising funds for which church? Does anybody remember? Jerusalem. So he's raising funds for Jerusalem because they're so heavily persecuted in Jerusalem. Because remember, Jerusalem is predominantly Jewish.

If you have left the sect of Judaism whether it's the Pharisees or the Sadducees, which they have apparently higher tolerance than you would imagine for those variations. But then, this other sect raises up, and it turns out it's the Christians, and it's not just a sect, it's a whole new thing. There's so much persecution that they can't get jobs, they can't get welfare, they're shunned by their families, and so Paul is raising funds for these people. But that can have a psychological trauma on various people to where people would walk away from their faith. Paul is trying to establish a church.

1 and 2 Thessalonians, remember when we were reading or studying through that in the main service last year? Paul wrote 1 and 2 Thessalonians within about six weeks of his departure from Thessalonica because he just tried to establish the church and then he got run out of the town in the middle of the night. But he says, I couldn't wait to find out what was going on, so I had to write you. He's trying to establish the church. So when he says to the Ephesians, pray for all the saints, it's not just, hey, pray for one another in your church body. He's saying, pray for all the saints. Now, I'm going to say something that is pretty challenging on the surface, but I don't think it'll offend anybody in this room. Do you think we should do that today?

What about the church down the street that's a little wacky? We should still pray for them too. Maybe we should pray for some doctrinal correctness, right? But we want to pray for the establishing of a church. That's where people hear the gospel. That's how people get introduced to our Savior, our Groom, Jesus Christ. So we pray, and we reach out, and we pray for others to reach out, and we are concerned for all the saints.

So, Paul is concerned not just for the Ephesian church, though he is, and he prays for the Ephesian church twice in this book. I don't know if you remember, but in chapter 1, starting in verse 18 or 16 or 18 there, he begins a prayer. and he prays until the end of chapter 1 and then in chapter 3 starting in verse 14 all the way to the end of chapter 3 he prays and he wrote it down or he had his scribe transcribe it and write the prayer down for the Ephesians so this idea of praying for one another is a hefty consideration not because it's a burden but because we have to recognize that the church body is bigger than the How many of our walls are in Holly Hill's Bible Church? The church is the people, not the building. Persecution, carnality, and culture were all commonly attacking the church then, but that continues to be a problem for the church today.

How many of you have seen in the news in the last 24 hours that there was one gal fleeing Saudi Arabia to Canada because of attacks she was getting from her own family. Anybody see that? That's, I believe, a Muslim. In Islam, it's okay for you to do a mercy or honor killing because somebody has dishonored your family. That's not okay in Christianity, but those same people will gladly persecute Christians. It's been in the news a little bit more prominently in the last year that in Islamic countries, if you don't fit within the status quo, your life may be forfeit.

That journalist, remember we saw that? These kinds of things happen. And so this persecution, you know, in our neighborhood we have had two Muslim community centers built in the last year and a half from what I can tell. Just in our like square mile block around our house. My parents used to have one on the other side of their fence before they moved to California. And there's one over in the shopping center at Iliff and Buckley.

That's a big deal to me. That sounds like a thing where persecution should be coming. I need to be praying for all the saints, but when you think about it, many of you actually in this room live in Aurora, some of you in my neighborhood. That's a big deal. That's happening in our neighborhood.

We need to be praying for all the saints that we would stand strong. Islam is not going to go away. Turns out they want to come here take care of our pretty liberal immigration laws, despite what you might read in the media, and establish a foothold here. And slowly take over an area because the church has lost its presence. So we need to be praying for all the saints. It was valid two thousand years ago, it's valid today. And I'm not saying that conspiracy theory fear, I'm saying that because it's practically real today. Turns out Muslims respond to the gospel too. So that's okay. It's an opportunity to reach out to people who at least believe that there's a God. Some people have falsely said it's the God of the Bible. Let's not go that far. Allah is not the God of the Bible. So, I'm praying for Paul.

Let's keep going. Actually, we're in a circle back around to the evangelism thing. Roy, I know you're sitting quietly in the back. I hope you have some thoughts on evangelism when we get there. Praying for Paul, he says, And pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. So do we pray for Paul now? No, we don't pray for Paul now. We already know what happened. God's taken care of that. When I was younger I wasn't sure about that, so I did. I don't think it had any impact, I'm just going to tell you.

Paul is asking for prayer for his words. Why did it matter which words Paul used? This is a really big thing to consider. Why is he asking for prayer for his words? Think back through the Acts study. So you can reach the people. He's preaching a new gospel. It's new. proclaim it properly. Properly, clearly.

So the words that he's using in and out of chains matter. So he's in chains right now, which is a blessing to him. We'll get to that in a second. But his choice of words and thinking through how to speak to various audiences is evidenced in Acts. In Acts chapter 17, he is at the Areopagus That's a fun word to memorize. He's there in Athens. Let's say it that way. He's at the Areopagus. And the Athenians loved hearing new things. And he says, I saw that you had a statue to the unknown God. But I know the unknown God. Let me tell you about him.

And he presents a worldview to them and he preaches the gospel to them right where they're at. He wants to have the right words to his audience so as a consequence they will be able to hear the gospel clearly, understand their need, and be able to respond to it. How many of you have ever preached the gospel to people with a wrong motive?

And I hope that no one can raise their hand, but I'm going to sadly say I get to raise my hand. My motive was that I needed to go out and I needed to get this person saved because I was right and they were wrong. It wasn't about meeting my Savior. It was about me being right. You can probably guess that was relatively ineffective because it wasn't a very gracious presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It was more an argument.

Nothing like telling somebody about grace while hitting them with a hammer. As it turns out, Paul was concerned about his words and it leads us to a principle that needs to be articulated. Paul knew that while He needed to be walking in the Spirit. He also needed to be mentally focused and growing and thinking about the words that he used.

See, it would be really easy, wouldn't it be really easy if we just said walk in the Spirit and then the Holy Spirit came in and you just disconnected and you were just like a little Jesus robot? Wouldn't that be convenient? When I abide, I'm just a Jesus robot. I know I always do the right thing and my brain isn't engaged. then we would all know we were all righteous all the time, always saying the right words.

But Paul presents to us a principle that we need to be abiding. We need to be praying in the Spirit, because we can pray with just our minds. We need to be praying in the Spirit, and we need to be walking in the Spirit and considering, in light of what the Spirit is showing us, what is true, how it is spoken, how we're living.

What does it look like? Does it look like Legalism? Does it look like liberalism? Or does it look like liberty? Because where the Spirit is, there is liberty. Those are all things that are worth considering. But Paul presents here this idea that as the Holy Spirit is moving in his life, he's changing his mind and showing him how to think, and showing him in developing. Abiding is not simply becoming a mindless vessel, but a mindful vessel.

And I don't mean that in a weird Buddhist way. Some of you maybe have heard of Buddhist mindfulness. That is not what we're talking about. That's garbage. We're talking about being aware of what God is doing. Because imagine, in the Old Testament, they didn't have the Holy Spirit permanently infilling and indwelling them and empowering them.

It was remarkable when Saul, and I've got it referenced there in 1st Samuel 10, Saul was filled by the Holy Spirit and walked with the prophets. And people observe, whoa, is Saul a prophet now? It was remarkable. When was the last time that as believers we looked at other believers and said, whoa, they're filled with the Holy Spirit? Anybody do that? We might have said, they're not walking in the Spirit, but that's not the same thing as, oh, I'm stunned to hear that as a believer they're filled with the Spirit. That's not what happens.

We are engaged and our will is in alignment with God's will. Not out of being robots, but so that we can walk in fellowship and live out the Christ life. So they were simply, in the Old Testament, they were simply to obey as an act of fellowship. I thought it was interesting when we talked about this before that in the Old Testament they didn't really have a personal relationship with God. Well, they did by faith. But not like how we do today. Not how we do today. So then this is different then. Yeah, this is contrast. We want to see the contrast between the Old Testament and the New Testament and consider this idea of the Holy Spirit moving in our mind and teaching us.

What does David say in the Psalms about how he learns? Thy word hath I hid in my heart. He's memorizing the scripture and he's comparing his thoughts and his life compared to the scripture. But he says things like, take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Why does he say that? Because God can do that. It was a possibility. David knew that if he was doing carnal things, just think for a minute, did David do some carnal things? Yeah, he did. That God made, there were consequences that came from that. As believers, we don't ever pray, take not thy Holy Spirit from me.

There was a praise psalm sort of a thing that came out during the 80s and it was one of my favorite songs when I didn't understand proper theology. I would sing that song and it was like, oh man, it's such a very emotive song and it was really good. But then I remember my dad saying, we shouldn't sing that song anymore. And I was like, but dad, that's one of the best ones.

And he said, but the Holy Spirit can't be taken away from us. But he could in the Old Testament. It rocked my world. I didn't know what to do for a while. I had to find a new favorite song. But Paul's thinking, his mind was being renewed in the process of sanctification, which is unlike Old Testament saints interacting with God. So he was compelled to be seeking prayer that the Holy Spirit would be teaching and growing him so that his words would land with his audience. We've said that already, but I think it's worth repeating.

Looking at Colossians 4.6, Paul's concern for words extends to the body, where they are to be letting their speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.

Because guess what? You're also going to be needing to present the gospel. And that's different than today's modern vernacular of salty language. I think we know that means something different, right? But instead, that we have gracious words in how we interact.

There's no way I'm getting through all this lesson, and I'm super sad. The next thing he talks about is the mystery of the gospel. Now we went over that when we were in chapter 3 looking at verses 3, 4, and 9. So I'm going to skip the mystery of the gospel if you'll allow me that. I guess we've already been through that in this class. Sorry if you were in the other class and you got transferred over here. I've got some notes on it.

Then Paul talks about being in chains. So why was Paul in chains? Does anybody remember from Acts? went to Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit told him, if you go back to Jerusalem, you're going to leave in chains. And he was like, OK. It wasn't a disobedience thing. He wasn't disobeying the Holy Spirit. This was a thing he knew God was doing.

And so when the Romans started to abuse him, he said, wait, I'm a Roman citizen. I want to go to Caesar. So Paul uses this Roman law that said, if you had some kind of abuse, you could go and call on Caesar. And he uses that to get a free ticket, so to speak. It costs him a lot. To go to Rome, where he's able to preach the gospel in Rome. Because he's like, I know I need to go there. And so he uses Roman law to be able to respond.

But he's in prison while he's doing it. But why is Paul so excited to be in prison and in chains? There's a lot of reasons, but what are some of them? God told him in advance. So he knew he was obeying. It was a sign he was obeying. More people would hear the gospel in the process.

What do we know about the prison situation in Rome? Not good. It's pretty terrible. He seemed to have a rental house that he was able to coordinate, but he was in bonds there. What did the Roman government have to provide 24 hours a day? Guard. Man! And they're stuck with this guy who just can't wait to preach the gospel to them. So Paul's in jail, and every 12 or 24 hours, or however often, he's got new people to talk to about the gospel. So much so, that in one of his letters, he says, the house of Caesar greets you.

Why did the house of Caesar greet him? because the gospel was there because the guards responded to the gospel and because remember they had a mystery religion the guards had a mystery religion and Paul was openly preaching a mystery and they didn't understand why you would do that so he had an audience that was just totally enthralled by this Paul dude they probably didn't call him dude so he's in chains in Philippians 4.22 he says those in the house of Caesar send their greetings So the gospel is spreading. Not only is he reaching people with the gospel, but they're reaching people with the gospel. So he's in Rome, he's in prison, he's in chains, and it's useful.

The other thing is in Philippians 1, 12-21, he tells the story of the Christian rabbits and the Christian jerks. That's one of my favorite stories. He says the gospel is preached even though I'm in chains. Those who are timid, like a rabbit, are preaching the gospel, and even those who are really upset that I'm in chains are preaching the gospel. I don't care, either way the gospel is preached. So the jerks and the rabbits. Speaking boldly, why did Paul need to speak boldly?

Paul was not ashamed of the gospel, as he tells us in Romans 1.16 and also in 2 Timothy 1.12, but he also had to be careful what he said and how he said it as a prisoner.

Again, he wants the right words so that they're the right words so that he can speak them boldly, but he needs to make sure that what he's speaking boldly will be heard. I have this really terrible problem that's part of my personality where I speak with confidence, I speak boldly, and as it turns out, A lot of people interpret that as arrogance. I hope I've never offended anyone in this room with that, although I'm pretty sure with a group this size I have. Being bold with truth is not the same as being arrogant.

Paul isn't being arrogant, but he wants to make sure that what he's speaking is clear It's understandable in that he takes advantage of every second he has on this earth until the Lord takes him home. That boldness means preaching the gospel, not in fear, not in shame, but boldly preaching it, even hoping that he'd be out of prison so he could do it even more aggressively or boldly with more impact.

The last section that I've gone here, I'm just going to tell you what's in it and then you can read it on your own. I have a section here, Evangelism for Non-Apostles. The inference throughout the whole New Testament is that you might actually need to be able to preach the gospel. The first thing is memorize 1 Corinthians 15 verses 3 and 4. That's the gospel. You can tell people that and if they believe that, that's the gospel. But the thing is that throughout the New Testament we're told that we need to know how to preach the gospel. If we look at Paul's actions in Athens as a very well written out account of his approach, we look at culture and language and history just the way he did, and we go, okay, what's here? How can I present the gospel?

And I've got a list of different worldviews here on this last page. Page 505. Humanism, Relativism, Postmodernism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Atheism, and Islam are all different worldviews. And I've got a really way too short brief description of what those worldviews kind of look like.

But what Paul did is he presented the Christian worldview to replace their worldview. But he had to do it clearly in a way that those people would understand. So hiding from these religions and not understanding them may end up hindering our ability, and atheism is a religion, we'll talk about that some other time, it may hinder our ability to communicate. So being aware helps so that we can then preach the gospel and show them our world view in light of what is true. So we're going to close and pray because I'm out of time. Please do.

Not going home today. Still has nausea and pain. We asked for a medical GI doc to be on call, to be called in today. He is better as he slept better last night, but not able to eat. Thanks so much, Margaret. All right. All right, well we'll continue to pray for him and if you'll share that with Courtney, I think he's leaving the service this morning. But let's close in prayer. We'll remember Bob again.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much that we can come together and we can pray as a group. We do lift up Bob to you and we do pray that you would heal him and get him back on his feet so that he can Come back to fellowshipping here and being part of the body. We pray for your wisdom and guidance for the doctors. We lift up our own walk with you, Lord, that we may consider the things that you've revealed here and that we would be always praying for all the saints as we pray in the spirit ourselves. We just thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.